Companies deal with large amounts of unstructured data, which demands flexibility and scalability from the databases that store it. Wide column databases, a type of NoSQL database, offer these very functionalities. NoSQL or “not only SQL” databases are used in various projects, including inventory control management, healthcare organizations, and railway systems. 

Wide column databases are used by logging and reporting systems, which store a lot of unstructured data.  Wide column databases are in high demand and popular with many applications, including music and social media. Music apps use wide column databases for storing user profile attributes and metadata about artists and songs to create a better, personalized experience for their users. At G2, we believe in maintaining taxonomy health by precisely categorizing the products, thus creating a category for Wide Column Database Software.

The rise in demand for wide column databases 

By the early 2000s, traditional SQL databases like relational databases were no longer sufficient to store the enormous amounts of data that was being generated. This is where NoSQL databases, which store and retrieve data other than tabular relations used in relational databases, come into the picture. A part of the NoSQL database family, wide column databases are known for their ability to scale and store a large amount of data in a single column. These databases are the go-to option when there is a requirement for scalability and flexibility. 

Wide column databases have the combined benefits of relational and non-relational databases and can work better with structured and unstructured data.

Now, how do wide column databases differ from relational databases?

Relational databases are one of the most widely used databases. They have a predefined schema, while wide column databases are dynamic and suitable for non-structured data and thus have started taking over. Wide column databases store data in rows and columns. However, unlike relational databases, the names and formatting of the columns need not match each row. Wide column databases are also very flexible and perform operations like faster reading and writing on a single data element. Wide column databases are the best choice for large amounts of data. 

NoSQL Databases category gains traction on G2

G2 data shows an 81.33% growth in the NoSQL Databases category traffic from February 2022 to March 2022. Companies have realized that they can save on their budget by using NoSQL databases over traditional relational or SQL databases. SQL or traditional databases use single servers to host data and scale the database. Hence, companies need to invest more to buy a bigger and more expensive server which may not be feasible. There are 15 products in the wide column database category, and G2 expects to add more.

Other types of NoSQL Databases

There are a few other types of databases under the NoSQL database family whose application changes depending on the use case. These include:

• Key-value databases: The most basic database of the NoSQL database family, it comprises a key and value associated with it. An e-commerce website’s shopping cart is one of the common use cases of key-value databases. The website may encounter billions of orders within seconds during shopping seasons. Key-value databases can handle the scaling of such high volumes of data through distributed processing and storage.
• Columnar databases: These databases store data in a set of columns. When analytics is run on a smaller number of columns, these columns can be read without consuming memory with unwanted data. Columnar databases are usually used in data warehouses with a large volume of data for business intelligence (BI) analysis. 
• Document databases: These databases are a derivation of key-value databases. The data is usually stored in a series of documents. Document databases are developers’ favorite when developing video streaming platforms. They are mainly used for content management. 
• Graph databases: These databases focus on the connection between the data elements. Each connection is called a node or relationship. These databases do not have a predefined schema like relational databases. The primary use cases of graph databases are fraud detection and knowledge graphs.

Looking ahead

Wide column databases and other NoSQL family databases give tough competition to traditional relational databases. Open-source wide column databases are gaining even more traction and are here to stay. Not only that, but many vendors providing change data capture (CDC) will also be in demand. CDC is a feature in wide column databases which allows the user to query the present state of the table and the history of all changes made to the table. 

With many projects, such as Spotify and Outbrain, using reliable and horizontally scalable databases, the need for wide column databases is bound to grow.